Package Updater in Tray

[Martin Bretschneider]

Hi,

I wonder what you think about this issue but beware since it takes some 
time to read:

You know that one big advantage of Linux distributions like Debian is 
the package management of all programms not only the operating system. 
In Debian, experienced users use aptitude or apt on the shell.

But I do not want to open a shell and enter the commands manually. Other 
(unexperienced) desktop users may not know or forget about it and get a 
system that is not up to date. I do not talk about servers since IMO 
only experienced users run servers and that does not concern me since 
they can enter the commands.

There a solutions that can update und upgrade automatically like cron-
apt but maybe a desktop user does not want to update a package, or he 
does not want to update a big package like openoffice.org using a low 
bandwidth like a mobile phone. So, an update tool that runs in the tray 
of a desktop environment like KDE, GNOME notifies and the user can do 
the updates. There is a standard for this tray area in different desktop 
environments for some years now, an app using GNOME lib also is in the 
tray of a KDE desktop and vice versa.

AFAIK, there is already no nice solution for KDE in Testing and 
Unstable. In Lenny it's the same: I always found adept to complicated 
but it isn't developed anymore 
(http://web.mornfall.net/blog/farewell__44___adept.html). So I used 
update-notifier from the GNOME guys. It works but requieres the GNOME 
libs. More important is the fact that update-notifier does not start 
automatically in KDE because of the configuration in 
/etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop (from update-notifier-
common):
--------------------------------------------------
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Update Notifier
Comment=Update notification daemon
Icon=update-notifier
Exec=update-notifier
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;XFCE;
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=update-notifier
--------------------------------------------------
Hm OK, it should "OnlyShowIn=GNOME;XFCE;", so I deleted this line and 
added the "X-KDE-autostart-after=panel" taken from wicd since it seems 
to be important. Now, update-notifier does start if I log in into KDE4. 
By the way, this does not work with KDE3 since it does not support the 
xdg autostart feature! I also installed cron-apt to make "aptitude 
update" regularly. Then update-notifierer recognizes updates and ask me 
if there are new packages. I like that but I have to to some research to 
find that out!

Since adept is some kind of depreciated (maybe it should be deleted from 
Unstable and Testing) there is another solution: PackageKit. It is used 
maybe in Ubuntu/Kubuntu and maybe soon in Debian: 
http://wiki.debian.org/PackageKit and http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=468132 . But I do not know anything about the 
current status.

What do you think: Do I have forgotten something? Should I report a bug 
against update-notifier-common? Should update-notifier be a suggested 
dependency for kde meta packages (but what about the GNOME libs)? Should 
there be more work in PackageKit?

But there should something happen since I do not like the current 
situation.

Thanks for reading;)

Kind regards from Martin

-- 
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       _o)(o_                         Mark Twain:
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      _\_VV_/_      the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.